Emily: Sex and Sensibility (The Wilde Sisters 1)

He’d been working too hard lately. He always worked hard but the past few months had been rough. He’d had acquisitions to deal with, the expansion of MS Enterprises into Brazil, endless projects that all required constant attention.

This was the result.

Foolish thoughts. Pointless imaginings. He was, and always had been, a logical man. He didn’t waste time daydreaming. He had built his empire on logic. On clear, cool thought.

Perhaps he needed a break.

“Mr. Santini?”

The Paris trip. Then a few days off. He’d fly down to La Tortuga, the island he’d recently bought in the Caribbean. Hadn’t he promised himself he’d find time to do that? There was a house there, adequate to stay in until he planned the one that would replace it. Maybe he could begin doing that while he was there.

“Mr. Santini. Sir.”

The sun, the sea, the isolation of the white sand beaches and lushly wild interior were the reasons he’d bought the island. Surely, a couple of days in that kind of privacy would restore his equilibrium—

“Mr. Santini. I’m sorry to bother you, sir, but a problem’s developed.”

Marco frowned and turned to the door. His people knew better than to walk in without knocking. If an efficient PA were at the desk she’d have—

Joe Stein, the head of the design team that had handled the Twenty-two Pascal project, stood in the doorway. Joe had been busy all week with final preparation for the building’s grand opening on Wednesday.

Normally, he had a ready smile and bright pink cheeks.

This morning, his face was pale. In fact, he looked as if he were going to be sick.

Marco felt a knot forming in the pit of his belly.

“What problem?”

“You, uh, you remember the plans for the atrium at the Pascal building?”

Marco’s frown deepened. Did he remember them? The atrium was the focal point of the restoration. His company had taken what was basically a useless empty space and turned it into a glass box, open to the sun, protected from rain and snow by a sliding glass roof.

“Si,” he said carefully. “I remember it quite well.”

“Yes. Well—well, we’ve run into some difficulties with it.”

“Dammit, man, don’t pussyfoot. What difficulties?”

“The orchids. For the display.”

The orchids. White orchids. Ten thousand branching stems of them.

The knot in Marco’s gut tightened. “What about them?”

“We’re—we’re not getting them.”

“What do you mean, we’re not getting them? I authorized the order months ago. “

“Yes, sir. But—but…”

Stein launched into an explanation that started with a series of tornadoes destroying dozens of greenhouses and ended with a freak hailstorm trapping a huge cargo plane on a runway.

Midway through, Marco held up his hand.

“Get to the point,” he snapped. “How many orchids are we getting?”

“None.”